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BeholdtheNicktopus
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:26 pm
Posts: 492
Location: Chicago
PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2018 9:29 pm 
 

Lots of folks have had thoughts about that, from every conceivable position, angle, and framework. What I've read by Foucault tends to even downplay the economic analysis, it is sort of what differentiates him from his Marxist interlocutors like Althusser (well that and the debate about ideology critique). I think Foucault would probably agree with the capitalism connection to individuality, but he doesn't typically talk about "capitalism" as such. I mean his analyses in "Discipline and Punish" for example have economic elements, but as always for him he wants to make it *more complicated and less reductive* or whatever. Capitalism is certainly not explanatory with regard to individualism for him, even if it is bound up with it.

Not saying that you were saying that, of course, but Foucault is super interesting to me so I felt like saying some shit! Even if I don't really agree with toooo much he wrote. "The Order of Things" has some fantastic analyses though, probably my favorite work of his I've read. I recommend that one most to anyone interested, even though the aforementioned "Discipline and Punish" is probably more accessible (and certainly far more influential to the public at large).
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Nahsil
Clerical Sturmgeschütz

Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:06 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed May 30, 2018 12:42 am 
 

Order of Things is nuts, half the time I was lost, the other half I was in awe. But yeah, I was just thinking about disciplinary power and the rise of the individual biographical subject that can be observed, categorized, ordered, toward modern biopower ends.
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~Guest 334273
Veteran

Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 2:19 am
Posts: 2513
PostPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:16 am 
 

A bit vague request for all the readers here: due to my distant workplace lately i'm spending a lot of time on train, and i'm looking for something to read during the journey.

In particular i'm looking for long books with a great sense of progression and an immersive story, but not too heavy to read: for example books like 1Q84 and Pillars of the Earth worked out incredibly well

I'm not too big on fantasy and sci-fi, but if you got an exceptional one that could appeal even on non-fans of the genre feel free to suggest :)

Thanks in advance

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PhantomGreen
Metalhead

Joined: Wed May 26, 2010 7:27 pm
Posts: 1226
PostPosted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 7:21 pm 
 

Right now I'm juggling three different books. Going back and forth between Steppenwolf, Dune, and book 1 of Malazan.

I really hope Gardens of the moon clicks with me this time. This is my third time trying to get through it. I'm well aware of how that book is perceived as a part of the whole series. I've even been told to just read a synopsis for it and just jump into #2 because the quality increases exponentially. Hopefully I won't have to resort to that, and at some point it just clicks. But right now about 1/4 of the way through it, it reads like a disjointed D&D guidebook. Wish me luck.
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~Guest 118084
With a 120kbps bitrate!

Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:05 am
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 3:39 am 
 

Presently, I'm reading Resurrection by Tolstoy. It's a very enjoyable novel by the way.

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PETERG
Metal newbie

Joined: Sat Jun 20, 2015 1:48 pm
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Location: Greece
PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:38 am 
 

I just finished Memoirs of a Geisha. It was a really neat book with lots of great facts about WW2 Japan. Should I watch the movie or not?
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credite posteri
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2016 9:59 am
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Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 8:05 am 
 

In the realm of literature, I'm presently halfway through DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. For anyone unfamiliar with his dark humour and coarse, rhythmic prose, it's an acquired taste but definitely worth the effort. Anyone into Bukowski and Henry Miller will likely enjoy his work, too.

For non-fiction, I'm currently reading RED SHAMBHALA by Andrei A. Znamenski, about Soviet esoteric expeditions to Tibet and Central Asia in the 1920s.

And for some light relief on my way to and from work, I'm re-reading Shea and Wilson's ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY for the fifth or sixth time since I first picked up a copy of THE EYE IN THE PYRAMID as a teenager.

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credite posteri
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2016 9:59 am
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Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 8:11 am 
 

Mamont wrote:
This book will probably never be translated to English (the only foreign language it has been translated to is French), because it would be considered controversial in the Anglo-Saxon sphere: he tells the story of the Donbass war from the side of the pro russian Donestk Popular Republic. The story of its people, men, women, what they are trying to build, how they see their future and their relationship with Ukraine.


I know about Prilepin and his history, he seems like a very interesting guy. I'd be very interested to see English translations of this and other works by him.

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BeholdtheNicktopus
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:26 pm
Posts: 492
Location: Chicago
PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 9:58 am 
 

credite posteri wrote:
And for some light relief on my way to and from work, I'm re-reading Shea and Wilson's ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY for the fifth or sixth time since I first picked up a copy of THE EYE IN THE PYRAMID as a teenager.


What an amazing series, haven't read it in maybe 5 years but need to re-read it soon. Have you read the Schrödinger's cat trilogy? Do you know how it compares to Illuminatus? Or any of his other fiction (the only other thing I read of his is Prometheus Rising)?

I just finished Plato's Protagoras. Was decent. Liked the Gorgias better. That one was a fuckin brawl. Still in English, though hopefully the Greek is not too far off.

Also finished Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle". Great ominous atmosphere, weirdo characters.

Finally I just started a read-through of the original Conan stories by Robert E Howard. The metal references are swarming on the page...
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PhantomGreen
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 10:37 am 
 

Just finished Joe Abercrombie's Best served cold, Which was Just as good, if not better than I expected. Moving onto The Heroes.
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~Guest 417309
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Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2017 3:30 am
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 5:26 pm 
 

BeholdtheNicktopus wrote:
credite posteri wrote:
And for some light relief on my way to and from work, I'm re-reading Shea and Wilson's ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY for the fifth or sixth time since I first picked up a copy of THE EYE IN THE PYRAMID as a teenager.


What an amazing series, haven't read it in maybe 5 years but need to re-read it soon. Have you read the Schrödinger's cat trilogy? Do you know how it compares to Illuminatus? Or any of his other fiction (the only other thing I read of his is Prometheus Rising)?



They're similar styled books but Schrodinger's Cat is less concerned with conspiracy and politics and instead focuses on science and gender. I actually prefer the Cat trilogy. Not dissimilar to his Masks of the Illuminati, Historical Illuminatus series and other fiction works.

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Face_your_fear_79
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2014 8:18 am
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 3:48 am 
 

Can some one please answer something for me? There is a novel that was somewhat recently released about the gangster Al Capone. And somewhere I think in the introduction it is mentioned that he was one of the first international celebrities. Al Capone!!! Not only a celebrity but an international celebrity. And one of the first!!! Are people just stupid? Or is there some other more terrible or benign explanation? Seems very strange in the very LEAST.

Hmm. Or am I reading too much into this?

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
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Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 12:42 am 
 

I read Name of the Wind. It was super fucking boring and bad. Basically it's everything there is to hate about Ender's Game except in the least colorful or interesting fantasy setting you could possibly imagine. Most of the book is like a financial aid drama where you learn excruciating details of the complex fantasy currency system and how the super Mary Sue main character is managing his finances to get through wizard school. This book is 700 pages long and nearly nothing happens, and half of what does happen is a really lame red herring from the real plot. Here's the longer review I wrote on Goodreads:

Spoiler: show
I went into this book really looking forward to it. The name was intriguing in that it defied genre conventions of including either fantasy tropes or generic heroic sounding phrases. Being a giant nerd for the D&D stream Critical Role, I got to know Patrick Rothfuss through that medium. While he's not an actor, he did have a way with words during his guest spots on Critical Role, and in one episode another player's character received a wordy letter written by Rothfuss's character that was well-written and touching. Naturally, I was quite excited to actually jump into the man's fantasy series.

Well, this is tragically boring stuff. It feels like the pacing was designed around adaptability to being a TV show. The entire thing can be summed up pretty easily, though: it's essentially a much longer, much less interesting fantasy version of Ender's Game, agonizingly awful Mary Sue protagonist and all.

This book is over 700 pages long, but shockingly little actually happens in it. The beginning is somewhat intriguing, as we get to know the main character, Kvothe, who is set up to be some immensely powerful hero of sword and magic who has gone into hiding as a bartender in some backwater town by cleverly changing his name to Kote (it's got two fewer letters!) and not doing a thing about hiding his immediately recognizable appearance despite even the local country bumpkins knowing all sorts of tales of his life but somehow never connecting the dots. Anyway, we get some setup with demons and/or possible Chandrian attacking locals (the distinction between these two types of things is never really clarified, except to say that the former is fairy tale nonsense that only idiots believe in while the latter is very real and scary, though the distinction seems to only really be academic). Kote/Kvothe has to fight some off in a very unexciting way. Oh, Kote/Kvothe has an interesting apprentice named Bast who's some sort of Fae creature in disguise, but we barely get anything about him. Finally, a chronicler named Chronicler shows up at Kvothe's inn, and says he's there to collect the true story about Kvothe's life, so then we launch into the meat of the book: Kvothe's backstory.

While the stuff happening in the setup was mildly interesting, the massive backstory stuff that makes up the bulk of the story (we're talking hundreds upon hundreds of pages) could not be more boring if it tried. First we get fifty pages or so of Kvothe as a kid traveling around with his family, who are the picture perfect leaders of a traveling band of performers. Here Kvothe learns everything about history, showmanship and playing music. Soon they come across a guy who's an arcanist from a university, who discovers that Kvothe is a child prodigy and teaches him everything about logic, rhetoric, math, science, and magic (called sympathy in this book, as it's very important to outline exactly how magic would work in a faux-scientific manner that is very unflashy and very boring, so I'll spare telling you anything about the sympathy mechanics). Eventually the arcanist leaves and his family is slaughtered by The Chandrian (I guess a collection of evil magic users - the little snippet of backstory we ever get for them is really lacking) ostensibly for writing a song detailing their origins.

After they're killed, Kvothe lives in the woods for a while, where he learns about survival and tracking. Then he makes his way to Tarbean where he lives for a really long time as a street urchin, learning about pickpocketing, lockpicking, cutpursing, and all sorts of rogueish activities. Basically another notch in the belt of establishing Kvothe as a 20th level multi-classed badass who knows exactly how to solve any bad problem he could ever face. We get something like a hundred pages of Kvothe surviving the mean streets of Tarbean, but instead of dramatic scenes of needing to murder people to eat or anything like that, it's a dreadfully dull account of how much money he had at any given time, how much various necessities in life cost, and various things that wound up causing him to lose or waste money. You get to learn a lot about the needlessly complex currency system in this part of the book, which is about as exciting as chartered accountancy, which this essentially is.

Eventually Kvothe leaves Tarbean and on the way meets Denna (the manic pixie dream girl of the story) while in the caravan. He finally gets to the University and not only passes the entrance interview with flying colors but actually gets paid to attend because he's just that much of a badass. After that, we get something like 300 pages of Kvothe at University, which devolves into a financial aid drama where he's constantly worried about his living expenses and tuition costs. If this sounds exciting, you are a bad person. Fantasy is about ESCAPE, not about reading about someone else's financial woes. Anyway, while at University he studies artificing and more advanced magic and how to be a doctor and every other bit of knowledge or skill you could think of, really. He makes two enemies: the weakest, least important of the faculty, and a bully. He puts a lot of effort trying to get together with the manic pixie dream girl but it never works out. He has several near-romantic run-ins with other women, which are weirdly written; this is fantasy stuff but it comes across as teenage stories of "and then a girl touched me once and then another time I almost saw a boobie" where there's no actual falling in love or any sort of wish fulfillment or anything like that. He also re-discovers music and becomes locally famous as a performer.

You may have noticed, as I did, that the entire plot where The Chandrian are super scary and murdered his family and it's a revenge story got completely tossed by the wayside for like 400 pages. I kept scratching my head, wondering when Kvothe would remember this little life event, and actually kick off the story, but it just kept not happening.

Finally, when you're in the final stretches of this weighty tome, someone sends some thugs to try to kill Kvothe, and while running away and hiding he overhears some gossip about a possible Chandrian attack on a wedding out in the boonies. He rushes up there, finds the manic pixie dream girl is of course involved, investigates the area and finds no real conclusions, then we're introduced to a red herring plot where a dragon has been eating trees which produce a sap that's processed into this world's version of heroin. I sense that Rothfuss consciously re-wrote dragons to be lumbering dumb beasts that aren't especially dangerous as they're herbivorous as a way of subverting expectations, but non-aggressive herbivorous unintelligent dragons are, you guessed it, shockingly boring. Anyway eventually Kvothe uses magic to kill the thing and people appreciate him for it, then he gets back to the university and gets promoted to a higher rank after he accidentally names the wind to beat up the bully. The Chandrian plot goes exactly nowhere.

Finally, the book pops back to the present and the story that had already been established 600 pages back about demons and/or Chandrian attacking people, and we get some flashy action and a tease that Kvothe has lost his mojo and needs the Chronicler to remind him that he's a hero.

The nitty gritty of the writing actually isn't that bad. Compared to someone like Robert Jordan, Rothfuss is a veritable wizard of words, though he can't even come close to comparing with the likes of Tolkien, Vance, Wolfe or Peake. Still, every last shred of mechanical writing talent is wasted by this lumbering, awful story. The distinctly unlikable and predictable Mary Sueness of the main character combine with the agonizingly uninteresting financial drama that forms the backbone of the story. The world is incredibly boring - we get a few different countries, all filled with humans, with minor differences between them and as far as we can tell no political tension. There's no interesting geography or climates; in fact these things are rarely described at all so it's mostly just generic forests and roads and nondescript cities with nondescript buildings. The background cast are slightly more fleshed out (manic pixie dream girl, vicious bully, eccentric professor, gruff Russian-like professor, Vulcan-like emotionless professor) but still lacking. The most interesting character by far is Bast, Kvothe's present-day Fae apprentice, but he's in maybe 10% of the total page count.

The story is set up for more excitement in the future, but unless Rothfuss has had a huge change of perspective about what exactly excitement is, I have serious doubts that the story of Kvothe will go anywhere I'll care to follow.
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Nahsil
Clerical Sturmgeschütz

Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:06 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:09 am 
 

Why is Consider Phlebas so damn long? I'm enjoying it, but it doesn't need to be like 500 pages.
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Razakel
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Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 8:36 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:59 am 
 

I also didn't like The Name of the Wind. I kind of thought I was liking it while I was reading it, but now that it's been a few months since I finished, there's just no incentive at all to continue with the sequel. I'd heard nothing but good things about it, and then a reliable friend lent me his copy, but yeah, pretty much what iamntbatman said. It's almost impressive how much nothing happens in such a long book. The protagonist isn't very interesting and his couple of friends are interchangeable, and that's pretty much it for characters. Really don't get all the fuss.

In other news, I just finished The Fall of Hyperion, and hey, I liked it! It's true that it wasn't as good as the first book, but I thought it was a worthy sequel. I'm gonna take a break with something else before I delve into the third book, though.

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
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Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:59 am 
 

Yeah, I'm honestly quite shocked that it's popular, to be honest. I mean, I guess people are just completely huge suckers for pretending they're the Mary Sue Badass, but he barely does anything cool. The vast bulk of the page count is "will the plucky hero be able to balance his checkbook this week?!?" The Chandrian are kind of cool but are in about five pages of text and
Spoiler: show
he never fights them. He never fulfills any of our wishes by banging the different manic pixie dream girls. He never really defeats evil and only has one real hero moment, but it was in service of defeating a coincidental menace rather than something truly malevolent.
I mean, for fuck's sake, one of the guy's nicknames is Kvothe the Bloodless and I'm not even going to spoiler tag this one because I'm doing you all a favor but he got that nickname because he was clever enough to take some herbal coagulants before being whipped for misbehaving at wizard school. It's seriously the lamest fucking explanation for having a nickname like "Kvothe the Bloodless" I could imagine in a fantasy novel, and it's not meant as humor or anything like that - Rothfuss genuinely seems to believe that the story there was worth telling.
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theposega
Mezla

Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:42 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:30 am 
 

I think The Name of the Wind is as popular as it is as it seems to be a stepping stone into more adult and/or "doorstop" fantasy. I enjoyed it a bit when i read it three years ago, but I have zero plans to ever read it again. And the 200 or so pages I read of the sequel were dogshit. There's a reason nobody really ever talks about The Wise Man's Fear.

Kvothe was just unlikeable to me, and it was super obviously just an author stand-in deal where Rothfuss wished he was more like Kvothe. Total Mary Sue shit and probably the only time I've read epic fantasy where I'd call the main character insufferably pretentious. The world was well-built if a bit generic, and it's the kind of fantasy where that sort of thing is arguably more important than plot/characters. I also kind of find it odd that GRRM gets all the heat in the sff community for making fans wait and Rothfuss has been doing the exact same thing for just as long.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:48 am 
 

How was the world well-built, exactly? There's a map at the front of the book but none of that matters. There are places that I guess had names but they were just nondescript towns. There was Tarbean which was a big city, and basically had no information given about it (despite like 100 pages of text taking place there) except that it had a poor side, which was bad, and a rich side, which was good. There were different realms or kingdoms or something on the map but the story never went to any of them and they didn't matter in any capacity except the people from the one place had accents. There was a university called The University. There was a generic monotheistic god that everyone believed in. It wasn't even generic; generic would have haughty immortal elves and greedy dwarves and evil orcs and pastoral halflings and whimsical tinker gnomes and plucky humans. This was basically just a featureless plain for Kvothe to be a Mary Sue prick in. It was Ohio, rendered into a fantasy setting.
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failsafeman
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Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:45 am
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 6:43 pm 
 

Razakel wrote:
In other news, I just finished The Fall of Hyperion, and hey, I liked it! It's true that it wasn't as good as the first book, but I thought it was a worthy sequel. I'm gonna take a break with something else before I delve into the third book, though.

Really? You liked Space Jesus?
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rexxz
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Joined: Sun Apr 18, 2004 8:45 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 6:49 pm 
 

You mean Luke Sky--I mean Paul Atrei--I mean Great Prophet Zar--I mean Dave Bowm--I mean The Q Continuu--I mean the Ori
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theposega
Mezla

Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:42 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:04 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
How was the world well-built, exactly? There's a map at the front of the book but none of that matters. There are places that I guess had names but they were just nondescript towns. There was Tarbean which was a big city, and basically had no information given about it (despite like 100 pages of text taking place there) except that it had a poor side, which was bad, and a rich side, which was good. There were different realms or kingdoms or something on the map but the story never went to any of them and they didn't matter in any capacity except the people from the one place had accents. There was a university called The University. There was a generic monotheistic god that everyone believed in. It wasn't even generic; generic would have haughty immortal elves and greedy dwarves and evil orcs and pastoral halflings and whimsical tinker gnomes and plucky humans. This was basically just a featureless plain for Kvothe to be a Mary Sue prick in. It was Ohio, rendered into a fantasy setting.


Buddy, I read it three years ago and have read probably 100 books since. I don't really remember more than my general sentiments on it at the time.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:07 pm 
 

failsafeman wrote:
Razakel wrote:
In other news, I just finished The Fall of Hyperion, and hey, I liked it! It's true that it wasn't as good as the first book, but I thought it was a worthy sequel. I'm gonna take a break with something else before I delve into the third book, though.

Really? You liked Space Jesus?


Spoiler: show
Do you mean the Keats cybrid? I was ok with that storyline. It all got a bit far-fetched in the second half but I went with it, and was invested in the war between the Hegemony and the "Ousters". I also dug the Rachel twist.
Soul's storyline is one of the best.


But if the first book was a 10/10 then the second was like a 7.5/10. Did you not like the second book at all?

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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:43 pm 
 

Spoiler: show
No, I mean the empathetic aspect of the human god that the Shrike was trying to get to appear via torturing countless people. You know, the dumbest possible explanation for probably the biggest mystery of the series.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:34 pm 
 

Heh, it's dumb, yeah, but maybe I didn't find it as dumb as you did. I honestly just sort of ignored that. I never really cared or needed to know where the Shrike came from. I'd hardly write off the whole book because of that.

Have you read the third and fourth?

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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:06 pm 
 

I thought the second Hyperion book was definitely a serious step down from the first. The first had all those mini-stories of the various characters' backstories that each felt like a pretty blatant (but usually fun) homage to Simmons's own favorite sci-fi authors. He did a good job of emulating those styles and weaving them together to make a cool story. But once the second book goes into "this is 100% Dan Simmons style" it took a big nosedive.
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theposega
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 11:00 pm 
 

Yeah i thought my disappointment in The Fall of Hyperion was just due to how different it was from the first, i.e. not being these cool ass varied vignettes that had their own feel. But after trying to read The Terror I've come to the conclusion that Dan Simmons is pretty much awful and Hyperion was a fluke.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 1:03 am 
 

Damn, I loved The Terror. What didn't you like about it? It had the perfect balance of deep, well researched historical fiction and slow-building supernatural horror. I can see it being too "slow" for some readers, but I thought the pacing was great. Haven't gotten around to the TV show adaptation yet.

Anyone read any of his short stories? I've heard good things.

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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:46 am 
 

Razakel wrote:
Heh, it's dumb, yeah, but maybe I didn't find it as dumb as you did. I honestly just sort of ignored that. I never really cared or needed to know where the Shrike came from. I'd hardly write off the whole book because of that.

Nah, I hated the book for many more reasons, but "Space Jesus" is the most concise. I'm glad you were able to ignore one of the biggest plot points in the book and enjoy it anyway.


Razakel wrote:
Have you read the third and fourth?

I'll never read another book Dan Simmons wrote, especially since he turned into an Islamophobic nutjob after 9/11.
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theposega
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:21 am 
 

Razakel wrote:
Damn, I loved The Terror. What didn't you like about it? It had the perfect balance of deep, well researched historical fiction and slow-building supernatural horror. I can see it being too "slow" for some readers, but I thought the pacing was great. Haven't gotten around to the TV show adaptation yet.


I made it probably 350 pages in and at least half of what I'd read did not need to be there. It was well-researched, sure, but a lot of what was included just seemed unnecessary. Like that 40-page chapter with the captain reminiscing about an Australian woman he caught feelings for. Like they're about to have sex and she's just spouting off all these platypus factoids. I get that it's character building, but that shit did not need to be so long. And I used to pretty much exclusively read 1000-page epic fantasy, so I'm more than okay with some needless padding.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 11:43 am 
 

failsafeman wrote:
I'll never read another book Dan Simmons wrote, especially since he turned into an Islamophobic nutjob after 9/11.


Oh shit, did he? I need to look into that, don't think I've read any interviews with him.

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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 12:25 pm 
 

I started reading The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. I usually avoid historical fiction because it often gives me weird historical fetishism nerdvibes and tends to be super boring, but this book rules pretty hard and was a big breath of fresh air after Name of the Wind. Apparently there's a pretty good TV series based on it? Anyway it's about a kid who was heir to some nobleman's keep and lands in Northumbria with Ragnar Lothbrok's sons invaded England in the 9th century. He gets taken in by the Danes and slowly becomes a badass who burns down churches and knocks the shit out of wimpy Englishmen. Real straightforward, punchy writing.
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~Guest 417309
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 1:24 pm 
 

I trudged through Hyperion and quit halfway through Fall of Hyperion. Didn't grab me. Simmons on his King-style horror shit is so much better. Carrion Comfort is a solid vampire novel.

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~Guest 21181
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 6:33 am 
 

I finished Wolfe's Castle of Days, a collection of short stories, essays, and letters. The essays on his own BOTNS were my favorite part of the collection. I did enjoy several of the short stories, my favorites being "how the Whip came Back," "Forlesen," and "the War Beneath the Tree." I enjoyed "Many Mansions" as I was reading it but I'm still missing something from it---it deserves a closer read than I gave it.

Now onto American Gods, because I needed something easy. First chapter shows promise.

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~Guest 21181
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 7:33 pm 
 

Well I made it to the end of chapter 2 and quit so I guess I learned my lesson on Gaiman :lol:


Off to read some nonfiction for a while.

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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:35 am 
 

Finished the Annihilation book last night, and damn, I was sucked in. This shit was liking walking through a dream. Totally psychedelic, enveloping weirdness that just didn't let go. Loved the way it communicated these broad, deep emotions, all loneliness and feeling like an outsider, etc, through the sci fi story. It was entirely different from the movie, but the general vibe and mood was the same and even done much deeper and more sensibly here.

Now onto the second one, hoping it's also good.
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BeholdtheNicktopus
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:02 am 
 

Annihilation was definitely my favorite of the three. Each is basically a different genre. Hope you like detective novels, because that is kind of the vibe of the second one!
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~Guest 21181
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 12:36 pm 
 

Honestly you should just stop with Annihilation, given you enjoyed the weird dreamlike para-reality aspect of the story so much. There's nothing strictly bad about the two subsequent books, they just feel like an altogether different series and a lesser one at that. The first book works perfectly fine as a very weird standalone novel.

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Razakel
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 12:45 pm 
 

I'd only say the second book is totally on its own, and I still liked it for what it was. The third book is kind of a blend of the first two. I liked the whole trilogy, but yeah, the first was the best and you could just stop there if you wanted to. Supposedly Vandermeer is writing a fourth book at the moment.

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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:35 pm 
 

So...confession...I've never read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy until just now. Well, I'm about halfway through it I guess.

I dunno...it's ok. Some parts are genuinely funny or clever, and it wins points for being somewhat old, but this weirdly triggers me similar to something like the BBC Sherlock show or something where it's just trying so fucking hard to be extremely clever all the time. I guess it's a comedy book, but I was expecting more of a plot or anything I'd actually care about rather than just a bunch of setups for clever comedy.

Meh. At least it's short.
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theposega
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:54 pm 
 

yeah i tried to read hitchhiker's in high school and probably only made it like 10 pages before giving up. shit was way too zany for me man
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